<<Print>>

Parents who had moved from one health facility to the other over the past month in search of vaccines for their children can heave a sigh of relief as the Ghana Health Service says, it has finally taken delivery of vaccines administered to newborn babies to fight deadly childhood diseases after months of acute shortfall across the country.

Vaccines for measles, tuberculosis, yellow fever, hepatitis and many others have been in short supply across the country over the past few months, forcing some hospitals to ration the available ones.

Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Ebenezer Appiah-Denkyira, had earlier indicated that the situation was as a result of lack of funding from government.

He said as Ghana attains lower middle-income status, it is expected to fund part of the vaccines, meaning that a budget must be put in place to cover the cost of purchasing these vaccines.

At the Kpone Health Centre for example, vaccinations were administered to the first ten parents who had their wards taken to the hospital for vaccination. 

In other places, postnatal visits by nursing mothers had to be rescheduled several times due to the unavailability of these vaccines.

Head of the expanded programme on immunization at the Ghana health Service Dr Bonsu George told Weekend Finder the Service took delivery of the vaccines on July 1st and have started regional distribution.

“The problem was with the measles rubela vaccines but we have taken delivery of some vaccines. These vaccines came in on the 1st of July so we have actually moved them out.” He said  

According to him, the shortage was due to a few delays the Service encountered with the delivery of the vaccines.

He said as at Tuesday, vaccines had been transported to the Northern Region for subsequent re-distribution to the two other regions in the north. 

The new arrivals include Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccines to prevent infant tuberculosis, oral polio vaccines, pentavalent vaccine and pneumococcal vaccine among many others.

 He indicated that arrangements have been put in place to get the vaccines to all the regional stores in due time for onward distribution to the various hospitals.

Due to advances in medical science, children especially those new born are protected against more diseases than ever before. Some diseases that once injured or killed thousands of children, have been eliminated completely and others are close to extinction– primarily due to safe and effective vaccines.